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  <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:<br />The Future of rEFInd</h1>

  <p class="subhead">by Roderick W. Smith, <a
href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com</a></p>

<p>Originally written: 3/14/2012; last Web page update:
11/12/2018, referencing rEFInd 0.11.4</p>


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<p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the <a href="index.html">main page.</a></p>

<hr />

<p>rEFInd is far from perfect. It's based on rEFIt, which has a <a href="https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=161917&atid=821764">list of active bugs</a> on its project page on Sourceforge. I have not studied this bug list in detail for rEFInd's first release, although I've probably fixed a few of those bugs because I encountered them myself. Other bugs I may never fix because I lack the necessary hardware for testing.</p>

<p>This page exists to document some of rEFInd's known bugs and limitations, as well as features I hope to add in the future. Some of the items on this list are things that you may be able to help with, so if you'd like to contribute, feel free to drop me a line!</p>

<p>The following list groups things that need to be done into broad categories. In some cases, there's some ambiguity about how an item might best be classified. Without further ado, then:</p>

<ul>

<li><b>Tasks with which non-programmers can help:</b>

    <ul>

    <li>Testing! rEFIt was complex enough that changes such as the ones
	I've made have the potential to disrupt the program's operation in
	unexpected ways. Since the initial 0.2.0 release, I've continued to
	add features to rEFInd, and every new feature is another way for
	bugs to get into the program. I can only test on a handful of
	systems with a limited number of configurations. Therefore, if you
	try rEFInd and run into bugs, please report them to me!</li>

    <li>rEFIt's original design, and hence rEFInd's design, enables easy
	theming by replacing icon files. If you'd like to design a new
	theme for rEFInd, feel free to submit it. I might or might not
	replace the icons it uses now (most of which come from the Oxygen
	Icons package), but I may provide links to themes on this Web site
	(or even host them on the project's Sourceforge page). For more
	information on designing themes for rEFInd, see the <a
	href="themes.html">Theming rEFInd</a> page.</li>

    </ul></li> <!-- Non-programmer help -->

<li><b>Improvements to existing features:</b>

    <ul>

    <li>As described in reference to version 0.9.2 on the <a
	href="revisions.html">Revisions</a> page, rEFInd includes a
	delicate and hackish workaround to a problem introduced by Shim
	0.8. Developing a better solution to that problem is a high
	priority.</li>

    <li>rEFInd's <tt>Makefile</tt>s and, to a lesser extent, C code,
	support <i>x</i>86, <i>x</i>86-64, and ARM64 CPUs. EFI is also
	available for Itanium (IA-64) and ARM32 CPUs, so I'd like to add
	this support.</li>

    <li>Currently, rEFInd can detect whether it's compiled for <i>x</i>86,
	<i>x</i>86-64, or ARM64 systems and displays this information in
	its "About" screen (<tt>AboutrEFInd()</tt> in <tt>main.c</tt>). I'd
	like to add detection for Itanium and 32-bit ARM systems, but I
	have no way to test such changes.</li>

    <li>Further to the preceding, rEFInd's GPT-scanning code (used to
	extract partition names) includes assumptions about byte order, and
	so will work only on little-endian CPUs such as the x86 and
	x86-64.</li>

    <li>A way to set the color of the font would be useful for theming
        purposes.</li>

    <li>The program's font features could be greatly improved by enabling
	use of a standard font format, by enabling use of non-ASCII
	characters, and by enabling use of variable-width as well as
	monospace fonts.</li>

    <li>The <tt>default_selection</tt> might be expanded to support some
	form of specification of disk types, as in a special entry for any
	optical disk or any external disk, no matter what its name is.</li>

    <li>It would be useful to be able to specify paths to boot loaders
	and/or initial RAM disks relative to the rEFInd directory (or the
	boot loader's directory, in the case of initrds).</li>

    <li>Currently the background for certain subscreens (such as the
	information page or submenu listings) is a solid color based on the
	upper-left corner of the screen. Having an option to support a
	transparent background is desirable to some users.</li>

    <li>When delivering rEFInd as a boot loader from a network server,
	rEFInd is limited to its default options and can boot only local
	OSes, not network OSes. The cause is that the server delivers a
	single file, so rEFInd is divorced from its configuration and
	support files.</li>

    <li>A way to identify specific Windows versions and present unique
	icons or change the text is desirable. Currently, a crude
	distinction of XP and earlier vs. Vista and later is possible for
	BIOS-booting on Macs, but no such distinction is made for EFI-mode
	booting, and nothing finer-grained is attempted. Improvements will
	probably require identifying unique features of each version's boot
	loader files or boot sector code.</li>

    <li>The support for booting legacy (BIOS) OSes on UEFI-based PCs
	currently has a number of limitations. Most importantly, it works
	off of the list of boot devices stored in the computer's NVRAM. I'd
	prefer to have it scan disks and partitions, as the Mac's legacy
	boot support does. Also, the UEFI legacy boot code presents empty
	optical drives and uses generic icons rather than OS-specific icons.
	This said, BIOS support is becoming increasingly unimportant as the
	transition from BIOS to EFI continues, so I'm unlikely to put effort
	into this issue myself.</li>

</ul></li> <!-- Improvements -->

<li><b>Known bugs that need squashing:</b>

    <ul>

    <li>I've been receiving reports of blank screens when using rEFInd on
	some recent Mac models. I've investigated this with the help of one
	user, and I suspect that Apple has made changes to its firmware that
	are likely to affect just about any EFI program. I don't have a
	definitive solution, but at least one user has reported that
	removing rEFInd's drivers has caused the problem to go into
	remission. Changes made in version 0.11.0 improve error reporting on
	Macs, which may help with this issue.</li>

    <li>Another Mac-specific display problem relates to "retina" displays:
	Some users report that rEFInd comes up in a lower resolution than
	the screen supports, and that this setting persists into the running
	OS X instance, and can't be adjusted using the usual OS X means.
	I've just recently (mid-2017) purchased an iMac with a "retina"
	display, so I can now begin to investigate this problem, but as of
	rEFInd 0.11.0, I haven't yet had a chance to look into it in depth.
	I've heard that this problem affects not just rEFInd, but also GRUB,
	and even Windows when dual-booting on a Mac; see <a
	href="https://youtu.be/tgTMxB-ffjM?t=3m44s">this YouTube video</a>
	and <a
	href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/866920/limited-resolution-booting-with-refind-on-imac-5k">This
	AskUbuntu question and answers,</a> for instance.</li>

    <li>Some EFIs have bugs that cause the allegedly case-insensitive
	<tt>StriCmp()</tt> function to perform a case-sensitive comparison.
	This causes any number of bugs in file matching. For instance:
	Changing the case of icon filename extensions (or various other
	parts of icon filenames) causes icons to be replaced by ugly
	"generic" ones; and rEFInd sometimes appears in its own menu (the
	firmware sometimes returns an all-caps version of the filename, but
	other times returns the filename with the correct case, causing a
	mismatch if the path includes lowercase elements). This problem is
	worse when compiling rEFInd with GNU-EFI than with Tianocore.
	Version 0.9.1 has made improvements on this score, but some issues
	may continue to lurk.</li>

    <li>The Shutdown option works correctly on Macs, but not on many UEFI-based
	PCs. On such systems, Shutdown reboots the computer. This should be
	fixed.</li>

    <li>The media-ejection feature (F12) should be extended to work on
	UEFI-based PCs and early Macs. At the moment, it relies on an
	Apple-specific EFI extension, and I know of no standard EFI way to
	do it.</li>

    <li>A couple of Mac users have reported that the brightness-adjustment
	features in Windows don't work when Windows is booted via rEFInd,
	but that these features do work when Windows is booted via the Mac's
	built-in boot manager. Unfortunately, I have no idea what causes
	this problem, I have no Windows installation on my Macs, and I have
	no way to debug it. Therefore, it's unlikely that I'll be able to
	fix this problem myself; but if you have the equipment and skill to
	do so, I'd be interested in receiving a patch.</li>

    <li>If you use a true MBR disk on a Mac to boot Windows or some other
	BIOS-only OS, and if that disk has an extended partition, bogus
	additional BIOS/legacy-bootable options may appear in the rEFInd
	menu. The reason appears to be a bug in the handling of
	extended/logical partitions in the <tt>refind/lib.c</tt> file, but
	I haven't fully tracked it down.</li>

    <li>The re-scan feature occasionally produces odd results, such as
	ignoring new media or keeping old media that have been ejected.
	This should be investigated and fixed.</li>

    <li>The "scanning for boot loaders" message that appears at startup and
	during the re-scan feature is primitive. Some sort of dynamic icon
	would be nice, but perhaps impractical, given the single-tasking
	nature of EFI.</li>

    <li>On my Mac Mini, launching a shell, returning, and performing a
	re-scan causes the system to be unable to launch the shell again. I
	have not observed this behavior on UEFI-based PCs. It seems to be
	caused by a truncated DevicePath to the shell, which includes the
	shell's pathname but not the device identifier.</li>

    <li>When specifying a volume by name in <tt>dont_scan_dirs</tt>,
	slashes are converted to backslashes in the specification but not
	in the actual volume name read from disk. Thus, you can't specify a
	volume by name if it includes a slash (as in <tt>Fedora
	/boot</tt>). Workarounds are to rename the volume to omit the slash
	and to use a partition GUID rather than a volume label.</li>

    <li>The code is in need of review to search for memory leaks and
	similar problems.</li>

    <li>If the user has a Linux software RAID 1 array with Btrfs, HFS+, or
	FAT filesystem, rEFInd will detect kernels or boot loaders in RAID 1
	twice. Checks to prevent this with ext2/3/4fs and ReiserFS already
	exist; these checks could be expanded to block such duplication with
	more filesystems. Using the in-rEFInd hiding feature (activated by
	the Delete or minus [<tt>-</tt>] key) can remove a redundant
	entry.</li>

    <li>Some Macs experience problems with waking up from suspend states
	when rEFInd is installed. <a
	href="apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91139/why-does-my-mbp-sleep-on-mountain-lion-and-often-not-wake-up/91150#91150">Using
	<tt>pmset</tt> to disable the <tt>autopoweroff</tt> option</a> is <a
	href="http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/91529/macbook-air-not-waking-up-from-suspend-sleep-with-refind-boot-manager-installed">claimed
	by some</a> to at least partially fix the problem, though. Using the
	<tt>--ownhfs</tt> installation option may also help in some
	cases.</li>

    <li>If you activate BIOS-mode support on UEFI-based PCs, you may find
	multiple copies of the BIOS-mode loaders added to your firmware's
	boot manager. Only one copy shows up in rEFInd, though.</li>

    <li>If you have a manual boot stanza for a Linux kernel with both an
	<tt>initrd</tt> line and a second initrd file specified on the
	<tt>options</tt> line, both initrd files will be passed to the
	kernel in most situations; <i>however,</i> one will be omitted if
	you enter the submenu (via F2, Insert, or Tab) and select the
	default entry there. This bug is caused by the convoluted way rEFInd
	generates its submenus, and I'm putting off fixing it until I can
	give that code the overhaul it desperately needs.</li>

    </ul></li> <!-- Known bugs -->

<li><b>New features I'd like to add:</b>

    <ul>

    <li>Currently, debugging rEFInd requires adding <tt>Print()</tt>
	statements to the code. Adding a logging facility that supports
	multiple log levels and writes the output to a file would help with
	debugging, especially when dealing with problem reports from
	users.</li>

    <li>I'd like to find a way to enable users to enter customizations for
	boot options and then save them to the <tt>refind.conf</tt> file.
	One possible way to implement this would be to have manual boot
	stanzas override auto-detected boot loader definitions for the same
	boot loader file.</li>

    <li>Along similar lines, some users have asked for a way to take
	detected boot programs and create a set of manual boot stanzas for
	them, so that they can be modified manually.</li>

    <li>Better support for touchscreens and/or configurable buttons for
	rEFInd's actions would enable use of rEFInd on tablet computers that
	lack complete keyboards. (Version 0.10.4 supports <i>some</i>
	touchscreens, but this feature relies on support in the firmware,
	which is not universally present.)</li>

    <li>The ability to rotate the display for users who rotate their
	monitors or who use tablets would be helpful.</li>

    <li>GRUB provides a configuration-file command called <tt>outb</tt>
	that enables manipulating hardware registers. Something similar,
	via the <tt>mm</tt> command, can be done in the EFI shell. I'd like
	to add such a feature to rEFInd, since it enables doing things like
	disabling one or another video output on Macs with two video
	cards.</li>

    <li>I have thoughts about creating an EFI configuration tool and
	information utility&mdash;something to tell you about your hard
	disks, enable you to manage MOKs, adjust boot loader priority in
	the NVRAM, and so on. This would be useful in system maintenance
	and in recovering from boot problems.</li>

    <li>An installation tool for the EFI environment would be useful. A
	simple EFI shell script might work, but because this function
	requires access to the <tt>bcfg</tt> command, this would work only
	from a version 2 shell or if <tt>bcfg</tt> were implemented as a
	standalone program. Another alternative would be a program written
	in C. Since Python is now available in EFI, a Python-based script
	might also work; but that would require installing Python.</li>

    <li>It should be possible to override specific auto-detected boot loader
	settings&mdash;say, to change the icon for one specific boot
	loader.</li>

    <li>A GUI configuration tool for host OSes (Linux, OS X, Windows, etc.)
	would be nice, but it's low on my personal priority list. If you'd
	like to contribute, I prefer something written in a cross-platform
	GUI toolkit, so that a single code base can be used on any of the
	major OSes.</li>

    <li>The ability to produce audio output (at least a simple "beep") to signal
        to visually impaired users when rEFInd is ready to accept input would be
        helpful.</li>

    <li>There's currently no way to create a manual boot stanza for a
	BIOS-booted OS. This isn't a big priority for me personally, but I
	can see how it could be for some people.</li>

    </ul></li> <!-- New features -->

<li><b>Improvements to the EFI drivers:</b>

    <ul>

    <li>Drivers for additional filesystems are desirable. Only XFS and JFS
	are missing from the major Linux filesystems. UDF would also be a
	welcome addition, as might drivers for other OSes (say, for the
	BSDs, especially if BSD developers create a boot loader similar to
	Linux's EFI stub loader). Also along these lines, adding drivers
	for Linux LVM and RAID setups would be useful.</li>

    <li>This may not be possible, or it may require a new driver, but a way
	to have the drivers access files (like a Linux loopback mount) is
	desirable.</li>

    <li>When built with the GNU-EFI package, an attempt to load more than
        one driver on my 32-bit Mac Mini causes the computer to hang. I do
	<i>not</i> have this problem with 64-bit drivers on my UEFI-based
	computers. I don't know if this is a 32-bit issue or a Mac issue.
	This is <i>not</i> relevant if you're using my binary package,
	since I build it with the TianoCore EDK2, and the drivers built in
	that way don't exhibit this bug.</li>

    </ul></li> <!-- Drivers -->

<li><b>Improvements to <tt>gptsync</tt>, <tt>refind-install</tt>, or other
    support tools:</b>

    <ul>

    <li>The <tt>gptsync</tt> program can return misleading error codes
	under some circumstances, such as when it makes no changes to the
	partition table. Fix this.</li>

    <li>rEFInd's support for network booting is primitive and relies on the
	external iPXE package. In my own testing, iPXE retrieves the
	BIOS-mode boot loader from some servers that offer both, which
	makes it useless on those networks.</li>

    <li>The handling of encrypted local Secure Boot keys by
	<tt>refind-install</tt> could be improved. Specifically, if you
	install without encrypted keys and then run <tt>refind-install</tt>
	with <tt>--encryptkeys</tt>, or vice-versa, the script is likely to
	ask for keys repeatedly. Error handling (if an incorrect key is
	entered, for instance) is also poor. If an encrypted key is used and
	a rEFInd RPM or Debian package is installed, that installation may
	fail to set things up correctly.</li>

    <li>A Mac-specific package is highly desirable.</li>

    </ul></li>

</ul>

<hr />

<p>copyright &copy; 2012&ndash;2018 by Roderick W. Smith</p>

<p>This document is licensed under the terms of the <a href="FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.</a></p>

<p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.</a> Thanks.</p>

<p><a href="index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page</a></p>

<p><a href="using.html">Learn about problems with and the future of rEFInd</a></p>

  <p><a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return</a> to my main Web page.</p>
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